


wherever i'm with you

by mcmeekin



Series: let me go home [3]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Lost Galaxy
Genre: Gen, Team 'Calling the in Space Team the Astro Rangers' 2k14, lots of friendship man oh man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:17:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2439854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/pseuds/mcmeekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Megaship doesn't feel right anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wherever i'm with you

**Author's Note:**

> It was really weird for me in Lost Galaxy how Maya was just like "Hey Karone we're best friends share my room with me sleep in my dead best friend's bed haha this is great!" and Karone just sort of went with it? So I'm fixing it.  
> All mistakes are my own.  
> Warning: Discussions of a canonical character death

It bothers her more than it should. She knows, logically, that it shouldn’t matter to her, that the rangers gave it up voluntarily, that they would be happy that it was in use again. And she would have agreed, if she were with them, but seeing it here, she finds herself unsure. Because looking at it _bothers_ her.

It bothers her when she sees the ship sitting tamely in a docking bay instead of racing through the stars, when she opens a locker to find it empty, when she notices that the Galaxy Gliders are gone, when she sees Alpha bumbling around the main deck alone. It bothered her the first time she walked onto the Megaship as a power ranger and heard DECA’s cool, clear voice say, “Welcome back Karone,” and it bothers her when DECA greets her now. It’s not the gesture that bothers her but how it reminds her that she’s been here before, but not _here_ , reminds her that this ship doesn’t belong here, that _she_ doesn’t belong here.

It keeps her up one night, the thought of the Megaship, the inherent wrongness of it. She sleeps in it more nights than she should. She knows that Maya wants her to sleep in her quarters ( _their_ quarters), but she doesn’t want to invade the space that was Kendrix’s.

She gets up and wanders this night, the night where sleep is far away and Terra Venture floats forebodingly through the Lost Galaxy. The main deck is empty; Alpha apparently powered down for the night somewhere else.

“Is there something you require, Karone?” DECA asks.

She shakes her head. “Go back to sleep, DECA.”

DECA’s red light blinks off, and Karone smiles. She can almost hear Carlos muttering, “Favoritism” under his breath. He and TJ used to swear up and down that DECA liked the girls better and listened to them more. Her smile fades as her eyes rest on Carlos’s station.

She couldn't sleep her first night on the Megaship, the unfamiliarity of it and her unease too great for her to close her eyes. She waited for Andros to fall asleep before leaving. They had bound her, but she could slip out of the bonds easily enough. She had wandered here, expecting all the rangers to be asleep. But here Carlos sat, hunched over and pressing buttons. She had backed out slowly, unwilling to disturb him and make him think she was up to something. He had been looking for Zordon. Zordon who had been taken, who she had held captive, who had eventually died because of her. That’s who Carlos had stayed up looking for at night.

Unable to help herself, she drifts over to Andros’s station. She rests her hands on the controls and frowns.

“It doesn't feel right,” she says aloud, wondering if saying it will make it suddenly untrue.

“What doesn't feel right?” a voice asks behind her. She whirls around, already falling into a fighting stance, before registering that it is a friendly voice, not a malicious one. She relaxes.

“Mike. What are you doing here?”

He steps fully through the doorway. “Left something here. Came to get it. Is there something wrong with the controls?”

She shakes her head.

“Then what did you mean when—”

“The Megaship. The Megaship doesn't feel right.”

She expects Mike to look at her like she’s crazy, but his expression doesn't waiver. “What about it doesn't feel right?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know; it’s just… it’s too quiet.”

This time Mike’s expression does change but not to one of incredulity. He looks as if he’s evaluating the truth in that statement. “Because there aren't any Astro Rangers here,” he guesses.

She doesn't answer that, opting instead to walk around to the viewing screen and stare at it. It’s blank, and, not wanting to stare at nothing, she pulls up an outside image. The Lost Galaxy spins into existence on the screen. Mike joins her shortly, staring at the galaxy with intense interest.

“When I was little, I used to chart galaxies in my spare time,” she says after a long moment. “Ecliptor would use it as a sort of reward system; if I finished my training for the day, I got to pick the galaxy we went to. And I would spend hours on my observation deck, charting the galaxy. I ended up visiting over 3,000 of them. But I never went to this one.”

Mike traces a star pattern on the screen. “I guess that’s why they call it lost. Because no one can ever find it who wants to.”

“Maybe it’s not lost,” Karone whispers after a brief silence. “Maybe it’s abandoned.”

Mike doesn't respond to that, only drops his hand from where he was tracing the stars.

“The ship feels abandoned,” she breathes after a while. “Like it’s lost its purpose.”

Mike continues gazing at the image. “That’s not true,” he replies at last, matching her voice level. “Damon loves this ship like it’s his child; he runs diagnostics on it every day. And Leo’s flies it all the time. And we use it in battle and to go places. It’s not abandoned.”

“But we don’t use it for what it’s supposed to be used for,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself.

Mike glances at her, confused. “It’s a battle ship, Karone. We use it in battle.”

She shakes her head. “No it’s not. I know the difference. It may have been built to be a battle ship, but that wasn't its primary use.”

“I don’t follow,” he says after a moment. “I thought this was the Astro Rangers’ megazord.”

“It was,” she agrees.

“Then what—”

She turns to face him, willing him to understand. “I lived on a battle ship all my life, Mike. I know what they feel like. The Dark Fortress was... cold. Impersonal. It was a battle ship that became a living space. My bedroom was supposed to be a strategy room. The Megaship has real bedrooms, built in bedrooms. It has a place to eat, a place to train. And it was always used for something other than killing, even if it was used for that too.” She sees Mike flinch slightly at the harshness in her tone. Rangers don’t like to think of what they do as killing. She knows better. “It was a home first, a… search and rescue vehicle that just happened to be used for fighting because I forced them to use it like that.” He flinches again, more clearly this time. All the rangers hate it when she uses first person when talking about Astronema. Usually she’s good about not doing it, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that they think of her past as a separate person from who she is now when she doesn't think of it that way. She plows on anyway. “And now… Now nobody lives here. Nobody sings in the shower in the morning, nobody eats breakfast while running diagnostics, nobody has sleepovers on the Simudeck; nobody uses the ship like it’s meant to be used, as a home. And it doesn't feel right.”

“Because there aren't any Astro Rangers,” Mike repeats.

She opens her mouth to protest but shuts it again, unable to find a proper argument. Because he’s right; it was the Astro Rangers who made this place feel like a home. And now they aren't here.

“I know the feeling you’re describing, Karone,” Mike continues. “The feeling that a place you once knew to be home suddenly feels cold and alien to you. It happened to my house after my mom died. It’s the reason I’m here, actually, the reason I decided to fly away on Terra Venture. Because home didn't feel like home anymore, not without the right people in it. And it’s the feeling Maya gets when she goes to her room every night.” He pauses. “Nothing changes about the place, not physically. Home isn't a place; it’s the people that fill the place.”

It takes her a while to drag her eyes away from his, to look anywhere but at the man who understands a little too well what it’s like to lose a home. She looks around the room, cataloging the memories of it.

“I miss them,” she whispers finally, breaking the silence.

“You’re not the only one missing someone, Karone,” he says in return, and she winces. “But,” he presses on, “you’re here now, and she’s not, and they’re not, and nothing quite feels right, and I’m not saying that it ever will, but…would you be willing to try?”

She looks at him again. “I don’t follow.”

He looks around sort of helplessly, trying to form the words. “I…It’s just—when Mom died, I never thought I could look at Leo again, much less get along with him. We coped in different ways, and those ways clashed too much. But here we are, and being with him feels like home again. But it didn't replace the feeling of home I got with him before Mom died. What I’m trying to say is… We don’t want to replace your team, and I know you have no intention of replacing ours but… People can have more than one team. You can have more than one home, even if one is lost to you forever. Just…can we try, Karone? Can we try to move forward?”

He looks so pleading, so lost, that she’s not sure she’s capable of saying no to him, but she’s not sure she can say yes either. Instead, she looks away and clears her throat. “What did you leave on the Megaship that you came back to get?”

“You,” he answers easily. She looks at him sharply. He continues, unperturbed. “Maya’s getting a new room, and she wants to offer you the other bed.”

 _The people, not the place_.

It takes her a moment to look him in the eye. “Okay.”


End file.
